Political Irony

Donald Trump lies. A lot. That has been going on for a long time.

However, Trump is now approaching a new state of negative enlightenment where he virtually never says anything that is actually true. An article in the Washington Post lists every significant claim that Trump made last night about Joe Biden, and fact checks them. The conclusion?

In his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination, Trump outlined a series of positions that he claimed are held by Biden but that, overwhelmingly, are not. It is, of course, not a new political tactic to stretch reality to cast your opponent in a negative light, but it is unusual to simply fabricate an opponent out of whole cloth.

Trump isn’t running against Joe Biden. He’s running against the guy he wants to run against, a fictionalized Bernie Sanders acolyte who, Trump clearly thinks, makes it much easier for Trump to win.

Let’s just take one example (from the dozen in the article). Trump said:

Joe Biden’s agenda is “Made in China.” My agenda is “Made in the USA.”

Both Trump and Biden have repeatedly made pledges to bring manufacturing jobs back to US workers. But that’s where Trump stopped. He has never even talked about a plan to do that.

In fact, Trump recently called for a boycott of an American manufacturer who banned the wearing of clothing with political messages. Even then, Trump claimed that Goodyear had specifically banned MAGA hats, which was also false.

That’s not supporting American manufacturing. And the results prove that. During his presidency:

• The rate that major federal contractors offshored jobs more than doubled.
• Government contracts awarded directly to foreign companies grew by 30%.
• The Department of Defense increased foreign contracts by 12%.
• When a company selling deployment bags to active-duty US troops falsely claimed that their products were Made in America when in reality they came from China, the Trump administration imposed no penalties.
• Even during his presidency, Trump companies — and Trump himself — continue to illegally hire undocumented workers.

In stark contrast, Biden’s website presents his detailed plan to increase manufacturing and innovation by cracking down on outsourcing, investing billions in research and development and creating at least 5 million jobs. This includes many specific proposals, including: tightening domestic content rules, making it more difficult for federal agencies to waive Buy American rules, and stopping companies from labeling their products “Made in America” if they actually come from other countries.

And that wasn’t even the most egregious example. Trump even accused Biden of not “following the science” concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. OMG, that is some hypocrisy.

Just this week alone, the White House pressured the CDC into changing their testing guidelines in order to reduce the number of reported cases, a move that puts people’s lives in danger. And just before the start of the RNC, Trump announced a “breakthrough” treatment for the coronavirus. But, like his “treatments” of hydroxychloroquine or drinking bleach, this was just wishful thinking on the part of Trump. The FDA has already admitted that claims made for plasma treatments were either just flat out false or at best premature. The problem with this is that if the White House keeps lying about miracle cures (some of which could even kill you), then when a real treatment or vaccine arrives, people won’t be willing to get it. Which means more people will die.

The Hatch Act is a law from 1939, which prohibits federal employees from political campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime. That means not on government time, nor using government property. The POTUS and Vice President are explicitly exempted from the law, but no other federal employees are allowed to participate along with them.

Which brings us to the Republican National Convention (RNC), which is clearly violating the law. For example, the Trump campaign is using the White House and other government assets as campaign props, and Mike Pompeo gave a campaign speech while on a government-paid trip to Israel.

But White House chief of staff Mark Meadows dismissed all that by saying “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares.” You know, maybe he is on to something. I think that we should start throwing away other laws that nobody cares about.

For example, nobody cares if people drive their cars over the speed limit. Get rid of that law right away! You may object and say that speeding is dangerous, so just change the law such that if you cause an accident by driving too fast, that would be a crime. But just speeding is a victimless crime, if it doesn’t hurt anyone. Right? I mean, even the police speed all the time. Nobody cares!

Or how about laws against jaywalking? People do it all the time, and nobody even notices. It is illegal to jaywalk even if the street is completely empty, but would you walk all the way to the next corner to cross an empty street? Of course not.

Or even better, get rid of the stupid laws against downloading music, videos, or games from the internet. Everybody does that anyway. Now that everything is digital, copyright is a silly idea.

If “nobody cares” is an excuse to break the law, then that shouldn’t be limited to just Republican presidential campaigns. After all, can you imagine the uproar if the Democrats did what Trump is doing? Sure you can, because you remember the uproar about Hillary Clinton using a private email server. It cost her the election. A total of 38 people were cited for violations of that. And absolutely nobody actually cared about it one bit. I’m sure only a few computer scientists even know what a private email server is.